I WOKE UP on the couch the next morning. It was like coming out of a fever dream. At first, I wasn't sure if I was awake or still dreaming, like I was peering out through stained glass. The earth moved beneath me like a ship on calm water, rising and falling over gentle swells—a sea right before the storm. A voice drifted in from the kitchen, distant and muffled.

I slowly pushed myself to a sitting position, propping my body up with my elbows. My ankle pulsed in pain. I grimaced, wondering how I'd ever managed to fall asleep in the first place. Exhaling heavily through my nose, I leaned forward and pulled back the leg of my torn and blood-stained jeans to examine the injury. The dark red splotches on the gauze had grown over night. They'd now dried to almost black, and a thin yellow crust surrounded them. My ankle throbbed in pain as the bandage squeezed the swollen flesh. I breathed in heavily a few times, trying to settle the nausea churning in my stomach.

I needed to see it.

Slowly, I peeled back the stained gauze. A bit of semi-dried blood pulled away with the bandage, sticking to it and stretching out into a gelatinous strand like drool from a dog. Teeth marks punctured the skin, surrounded by inflamed red flesh. My leg glistened with clear weeping fluid from the lacerations. Blood trickled out of the two deeper cuts, but they weren't as severe as I'd feared from how painful it was and the amount it'd been bleeding last night. The fabric of my jeans must have protected me from a lot of the puncture force. The amount of bruising concerned me, however. Along with the swelling, deep black and blue marks surrounded the bite.

I rewrapped the bandage a bit looser to accommodate the swollen flesh. A chill ran through my body, and cold sweat lined my brow. My mouth and tongue were dry cotton. I needed water.

I leaned back on my hands and rotated my body to shift my legs to the side of the couch, preparing to stand up. The voice drifted in from the kitchen again. Jeremey. Who was he talking to?

I placed weight on my good leg and carefully stood up. Balancing myself on the arm of the burgundy couch, I tested my other foot. I touched the toe to the floor first and slowly added pressure. As soon as I put my heel down, searing pain shot through my entire leg, and sweat dripped from my forehead. I shivered.

I worried there might be more damage than the cuts, perhaps deeper tissue bruising from the force of the jaws. I knew I should go to the hospital and get it checked out, for the risk of infection alone if nothing else, but for some reason I felt like I couldn't. There was no hospital in Millstone. The nearest hospital was in Hammonton which was a 30 minute drive away. Going to the hospital would be like putting a finger in your belly button and twisting until the left over bit of the umbilical cord unwound and your entire body unraveled into a bloody spiral of organs and intestines.

The fear was inexplicable and irrational, but it was there all the same.

I couldn't go. I couldn't leave.

I needed water.

Careful not to place too much weight on my bad leg, I slowly limped into the kitchen.

Jeremey leaned with his back against the light blue laminate island countertop in the center of the room. His phone was pressed to his ear, and he was looking away from me, out the white-washed door that led to the dead backyard. All the grass had dried up over the winter, and since the groundhog had seen the shadow of a devil rather than his own on February second, winter had decided to go on indefinitely rather than last only another six weeks.

Everything in Millstone was dead.

"Cool," Jeremey said lowly into the phone. "Thanks man. I owe you." A pause. "Okay, Tuesday, got it."

He hung up the cell phone and placed it face down on the island. It made a dull click.

I leaned back against the counter between the sink and the refrigerator. "Who was that?"

Jeremey spun around to face me. "Jesus, I didn't hear you come in, Harper. I thought you were still asleep."

"I just woke up." I pulled a fridge magnet off the old white refrigerator. It read "Wildwood" and featured illustrated scenes of beaches and boardwalks circa 1970 within each of the heavy block letters.

Jeremey leaned against the island. "How's your ankle this morning?" He tried to peek over the counter to look, but the leg of my jeans was pulled down so he wouldn't be able to see the swelling. I knew he would insist on taking me to the hospital if he saw how bad it was, and I wasn't going.

"It feels a lot better," I lied. I opened a cupboard and grabbed one of the orange plastic cups from the lower shelf. I turned on the faucet and filled it with water. As soon as I took a drink, my mouth started to feel better. I set the cup down on the counter half finished. "Who were you on the phone with?"

"Are you sure you're all right, Harper?" He frowned at me. "You look really pale."

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. "We need to start thinking about tonight though. We need to start planning for how we are going to get her out."

"We aren't going back tonight," Jeremey stated.

"What do you mean? We have to. She's hurt. We need to get her out of there."

"No. I'll respect what she said about not involving the cops, but we are not half-assing this job again. You could have been killed last night. We both could have if we didn't bring that bat or if Joshua had come out himself." He sighed, brushing some crumbs off the countertop and onto the floor. "I just got off the phone with Rick."

"Why were you talking to Rick?"

"I asked him if he could get me a gun."

My mouth dropped open.

"I'm paying some guy Kurt $430 for it. I don't want to shoot anyone, but, Harper, this situation is serious. It isn't something we should be messing around with." He paused as if waiting for me to say something, but I didn't. "I am not bringing a bat to a dogfight again."

I didn't know what to say. He was right.

"I pick it up from him Tuesday," Jeremey continued. "I'm meeting him back in the ravine behind the post office at eight."

"Tuesday." Today was Sunday. "That's still three days away."

Jeremey nodded.

"What if she doesn't make it until Tuesday?" I asked.

"That was the best Rick could get me," Jeremey said. "Believe me, I tried everything."

I sighed. "I wish we could go sooner. She was in pain, Jeremey. We need to get her to a hospital."

"I know." Jeremey's eyes drifted away from me, back to the door to the backyard. "Not just that though, didn't you notice, Harper?" He made eye contact with me again.

"Notice what?"

"She's pregnant."

I nearly fell over. My feet slipped out from under my body, and I barely caught myself by bracing my arms on the countertop. "What?" I asked in disbelief, my voice coming out in a gasp.

"By the look of it, pretty damn pregnant too. Six months at least, maybe more. I'm surprised you didn't notice, although I guess she did have that blanket wrapped around her and everything. There was a lot going on."

"Fuck," I hissed under my breath. I pushed my fingers back through my hair, grimacing as my ankle throbbed again. My hand went to my leg, but I shoved it into my pocket instead to avoid looking like I was hurting.

"What?" Jeremey asked me.

"It's just," I began slowly, "the wind."

"What about the wind?"

"We were right," I said. "It's preparing for something."